Perdido 03

Friday, March 13, 2015

Cathy Nolan Says Assembly Putting Together An "Opt-Out" Bill

During a CapTon interview last night, Nolan, a Queens Democrat,
revealed her conference is “looking at legislation that would really
reaffirm a parent’s right to opt out.”

“I think that we have to give parents some say here,” the
assemblywoman said. “And it’s an obligation on the part of the Regents
and the state Education Department to make sure that these tests are
valid tests that reflect appropriately the diverse backgrounds of our
children, the skill set is it the right skill set, the appropriate age
level.”

“…We’ve heard from an awful lot of people on Long Island, and it has
made an impact on me, and I hope it will make an impact on the Senate
majority as well.”

Nolan noted that the testing “mania” (as she called it) coincided
with her ascension to the position of Education Committee chair, and she
now regrets some of the early support she gave to the idea that regular
and rigorous testing was the best way to assess student performance.

“I sometimes feel, you don’t want to second guess
yourself, (but) I have stepped from some of the initial support I gave
it myself,” Nolan said.
“If I had to do it again, I would have opted my own son out from some
of these tests. He would probably be happy to hear that now, he’s
pretty much finished with them. But I think it created too much of a
burden. We’ve kind of over-tested our children, so I think we really
need to take a step back.”

The governor's agenda promotes a heavy emphasis on testing - 50% of a teacher's evaluation will be based on test scores - so I can't imagine he's going to agree to an "opt-out" bill coming from the Assembly.

But it's important to get him publicly to take a stance on "opt-out" so that parents can see just whose side he's on - the testing companies and edu-entrepreneurs who make the money off this chaos.

4 comments:

I hope our friend Mr. Cuomo was able to view the video of the beat down at the McDonalds in brooklyn. Mr. Governor, this is a typical example of the type of kids that parade around NYC schools and you want to tie 50 percent of my hard earned livlihood on a bunch of seriously ill thugs?? This type of behavior is rampant throughout NYC schools and now you can see how difficult it is to teach this generation of NYC kids. You should be able to see how difficult it is to manage these students and that the real issues are at the home front and not in our schools!!!! If this video does not give credibility to the teachers union well then we live in a very sad sad society which is destined to collapse if Cuomo continues to focus on the hard working NYC teachers rather than the real issue which is families of NYC kids.

I'm sure Cuomo will argue that it is the fault of the 70% of teachers who are ineffective. If there is something wrong with society, firing teachers(lots and lots of them) will help everything. I don't think her gang, the "Young Thugs" as they call themselves really care how engaging your lesson is, but sure, why not blame us when they fail their tests.